Keep enemy combatants out of the U.S.

Bringing enemy combatants to Illinois is no consolation for failure to deliver the 2016 Summer Olympics

December 20, 2009|By Orrin G. Hatch

President Barack Obama has decided the federal government should purchase an Illinois state prison and use it to house Guantanamo detainees. After unsuccessfully lobbying the International Olympic Committee to bring the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago, he has decided to bring captured enemy combatants to Illinois instead. This has to be worst consolation prize in human history.

I am concerned that this transfer into the U.S. will grant privileges and rights to the detainees. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, well-established constitutional protections are triggered once a detainee is brought into the United States. These rights are not always available when an alien is detained outside our nation's borders.

One nightmare scenario is the possibility of an activist judge ordering the release of detainees who have been held indefinitely. Previously, in the cases of the Chinese Muslim Uighurs, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the Uighurs posed no threat and should be released into the United States. Fortunately, the government appealed this decision and it was overturned. However, a dissenting judge on the appellate court ruled that even if the Uighurs had received weapons training, which they in fact had at an al-Qaida training camp, that alone cannot show that they are a threat to the United States.

The judge continued to say that the Uighurs' training in Afghanistan poses no more of a threat than the millions of American citizens who have received firearms training here in the U.S. The last time I checked, gun-ownership advocacy groups do not pledge to destroy the United States. This extreme left reasoning is precisely the sort of thing that could possibly lead to the release of detainees from a facility in the U.S. under immigration or asylum reasons. Bringing detainees inside the U.S. will make it harder for the Obama administration to fight these claims.

In November, Attorney General Eric Holder informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that he does not know what rights or privileges detainees may receive once they are brought to the U.S. In response to questions about detainees' immigration rights, Holder repeatedly stated that he was not an immigration lawyer and was not sure of what rights could be applied.

During the Department of Homeland Security hearing, the Senate Judiciary Committee was informed that neither Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano nor the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within DHS, were consulted on possible immigration entitlements detainees may be eligible for when brought to the United States. Napolitano sidestepped the rights issue by deferring to Holder. This does nothing to assuage my concerns or the concerns of both the House and Senate who, at the behest of majority Democrats, voted decisively in May to deny $80 million in funding to close Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

One day after that bipartisan vote in the Senate, the president spoke at the National Archives. During that speech, he stated that after Guantanamo is closed there will be detainees who cannot be prosecuted and also pose a clear danger to the American people. He further elaborated on the type of threats these detainees pose. Examples of that threat included people who have received extensive explosives training at al-Qaida training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States. For that reason these individuals will remain in detention indefinitely.

If Obama intends to suspend the right of habeas corpus in cases where detainees still pose a threat to the U.S., where does he draw the line? The Archives speech gives us insight into his criteria for evaluating a detainee's threat potential. On the president's first day in office, there were 240 detainees at Guantanamo, 174 of them trained or trainers at al-Qaida camps or facilities. In the cases of 112 of these detainees, there is direct evidence that they participated in combat hostilities; 64 of those remaining detainees worked directly for or had direct contact with bin Laden; and 118 of those detainees were either recruited or inspired by a terror network with the goal of killing Americans. Therefore, looking at the threats posed and what it will cost us to purchase and outfit a new facility, it appears obvious to me that these detainees are fine where they are. The closure of Guantanamo is a solution in search of a problem.

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Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, is a longtime member and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.